Cancer? cut out the middlemen and get the scientists onboard

I just read this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9508895/A-virus-that-kills-cancer-the-cure-thats-waiting-in-the-coldc.html

After going through it, I thought to myself that the only problem here is a single million euros, what exactly is the problem? We could probably fund this stuff using tools like kickstarter or perhaps even looking at this link:

there are ways to put money directly in the hands of the people who will use it without giving it to the charity middlemen who slice and dice that money with a thousand tiny cuts until it’s a fraction of what it was.

if we started to fund directly things like this, instead of relying on middlemen, we’d probably be able to russle up many times that million of currency that he was asking for, are you telling me that a cancer sufferer wouldn’t stump up 10 quid/euros/dollars to a charity which has a seemingly workable solution.

combine that with peer review and a proper scientific process that simply put up a shopping list of items they need and the results as soon as they are acquired and I’m sure there are millions of people who could find a single unit of currency, multiply that by the actual value they give….

the link I gave you above, he raised that for a bloody museum for a guy who is dead for 50 years and he raised 1 million dollars in NINE DAYS!

if you can do that, you can do anything….we just need to start using the tools correctly, it’s 2012 and we can do these things, we just need to get people onboard the train!

The actual plan might go like this, a scientific community could produce a list of reasonable treatments that need funding and things they need in order to go forward, the scientists involved would peer review each others work without question since they already want to do that, but if resources are needed to fund peer review (the experiment for example) then it could be on the list of things they need to purchase.

This list of items can be directly funded by people using those donation websites and the money directly into the account of those who will spend the money on the actual work, no more middlemen! no more wastage at the middle.

Once results are back, they are owned by the scientists AND the people who funded the work, so the results are published in order for more peer review to take place. Selection of new directions and possibilities are created by that peer review and of course, if the people consisting of the millions of internet users collaborating can fund even more development.

Bogus results would be exposed, research would be optimised and the scientists combined with the more intelligent of the community around would effectively balance the system so it can’t be abused by the guys pulling on strings to get things done which aren’t actually effective.

So it’s a self-balancing system, if done correctly, would provide MILLIONS, not a single million of euros to the people who actually need it.

With a feature like this, I can’t see anybody with a viable cancer or any illness being underfunded for long. Obviously the more dangerous comes first on the list cause it affects more people, but over time it could be expanded and hopefully not abused to geniunely push research forward ON A SCIENTIFIC BASIS ALONE.

I think by now you are probably aware of Dr. Craig Meyer’s research at Penn State University along similar veins as Dr. Essand’s. The similarities also extend to the (lack of funding for) clinical human pahse-1 trials.

Note: my wife has just been diagnosed with cervical cancer. I do not have any connection whatsoever to Penn State or Dr. Meyers, apart from the fact that his AA2V virus (a virus which already exists) was first ‘tested’ on cervical cancer cells.

sorry for not replying sooner, I’ve not been taking care of my blog because 99% of the time nobody add comments, I get a lot of hits for old articles with that “nugget of gold” information people search for a lot.

what I’d like to do is explore what options we have in terms of pushing this towards some media or getting more public attention.

I’ve been trying to get people to contribute to an indiegogo campaign that I’ve got running, but fact is, I don’t have the extensive media contacts, or contacts with others in the scientific professions in order to effect a big change.

can we work together perhaps in order to change that?

it could be that Dr Meyers problem is solved in exactly the same way that we are trying to solve Professor Essand’s problem, crowdfunding.

I believe that with crowdfunding, we can sidestep the Big Pharma companies who only invest in a product because they can make profit, to do that we need to engage with the public and get them on our side.

Do you have any skills or connections that we can bring to the table? Do you know any marketing, connected with any media, do you do mail shots?

what I would like are team members, who can push equally, tweet, add facebook updates, put photos, add content, email people they are connected to.

that is what I’m doing right now, but it’s so hard to do it as a single one man team I’m failing.

With your help I perhaps could change that, do you have a little bit of spare time in order to help

What we could do is focus on one campaign and when that is done, use all the knowledge we’ve accumulated with this to create a new campaign for Dr Meyers, perhaps thats how we can work together, because I know you’ll push heaven and earth for the chance to fund that research if it means affecting your family and potentially being first in line for that human trial, I’m sure you’re thinking about it right now.

So, with my technical, online and associated skills, to you with what you can bring to the table, do you think we can do something about this?